An important human resource development (HRD) implication of the People’s
Republic of China’s (PRC) rapidly expanding economy has been the emergence
of a critical shortage of grey-collar workers (GCW). Although ‘grey-collar’ has
been commonly used in the West to describe an aging population within the
workforce, in China it refers to people who are neither white nor blue collar
workers but technicians. The shortage of GCW constrains the PRC’s economic
and developmental sustainability, and has been recognized in central and
provincial government initiatives to increase training and development of
employees within these fields. While acknowledged as a policy and organizational
problem, there has been no research investigating what organizations are doing to
develop these employees. Drawing upon a survey of 310 semi-skilled and skilled
employees in Beijing, our findings suggest that while the surveyed organizations
are investing heavily in both on- and off-the-job training, employees’ perceived
value of such differs markedly according to age and position. The research has
important implications for China’s HRD strategy in suggesting links between
training and other human resource management (HRM) functions are yet to be
evidenced.

Copyright 2009 Routledge. This is an electronic version of an article published in Human Resource Development International, Volume 12, Issue 3 July 2009 , pages 279 - 296. Human Resource Development International is available online at: http://www.informaworld.com with the open URL of your article.